When a Google map is embedded within a responsive design page, how does it render the map when the page is being viewed as a mobile layout. In other words, when shrunken down to a mobile layout, does an embedded map respond to touch gestures in an effective and smooth manner?

This is a pretty broad question--can you provide some additional information about specific features/behavior of google maps you are most interested in and how that relates to the user experience?
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Charles WesleyFeb 6 '13 at 0:23

2

IMO there's no way to answer this other than "test it". It'll probably vary due to both your implementation and due to Maps' current API
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Ben Brocka♦Feb 6 '13 at 1:06

2 Answers
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It's certainly possible to embed a Google Maps to be viewed from Android Browser, and it's perfectly usable with touchscreen (drag around, pinch-zoom, etc), and I expect from any other touchscreen smartphones that are sufficiently powerful. It may have significant lag on less powerful phones though.

This biggest problem I have found when implementing Google Maps in to mobile websites is that it uses the users swipe gesture to navigate the map. On a phone, to make the Map a useful size, it almost always needs to bee a full screen width. This becomes problematic when the users starts scrolling down the page and tries to scroll to content below the Map, but just starts scrolling the map.

Google Maps API allows for different renderings of the map so you can specify a location and it will render a static image. This may be a better solution and then allow the user to click into a full screen map from there so there is no interfering with page interactions.